R. D. Laing was indebted, although not exclusively or uncritically, to his early Scottish intellectual context. He engaged, for instance, throughout his life with the ideas of the Scottish philosopher John Macmurray. Despite the relative lack of scholarship on twentieth-century Scottish thought, it is possible to trace Laing's participation in a tradition of the importation and translation of Continental ideas (exemplified by scholars such as the theologian Ronald Gregor Smith). Laing adapted Continental ideas to a particularly Scottish concern with psychotherapy as a form of demythologized Christianity; this is apparent in his latent affinity with the Scottish psychoanalyst W. R. D. Fairbairn, and also in his explicitly Christian reconceptualization of the Jungian concept of metanoia.
Abenheimer, K.M. (1955) Critical observations on Fairbairn's Theory of Object Relations. British Journal of Medical Psychology, 28 (1), 29-40.
2.
Adler, A. (1938) Social Interest: A Challenge to Mankind, translated by J. Linton and R. Vaughan (London: Faber & Faber); originally published in 1933 in German as Der Sinn des Lebens.
3.
Andrews, J. (1998) R. D. Laing in Scotland: facts and fictions of the `rumpus room' and interpersonal psychiatry. In M. Gijswijt-Hofstra and R. Porter (eds), Cultures of Psychiatry (Amsterdam: Rodopi), 121-50.
4.
Beveridge, C. and Turnbull, R. (1989) The Eclipse of Scottish Culture: Inferiorism and the Intellectuals (Edinburgh: Polygon ).
5.
Burston, D. (1996) The Wing of Madness: The Life and Work of R. D. Laing (Cambridge, MA, and London : Harvard University Press).
6.
Carthy, I. (2008) Book review: Gavin Miller (2004) R. D. Laing. History of Psychiatry, 19 (2), 237-9.
7.
Collingwood, R.G. (1983) The historical logic of question and answer. In P. King (ed.), The History of Ideas (London: Croom Helm), 135-52.
8.
Collins, K. (2008) Joseph Schorstein: R. D. Laing's `rabbi'. History of Psychiatry, 19 (2), 185-201.
9.
Craig, C. and Brewer, J. (2007) Editorial. Journal of Scottish Thought, 1 (1), i-xix.
10.
Fairbairn, W.R.D. (1994) In defence of object relations theory. In D. E. Scharff and E. Fairbairn Birtles (eds), From Instinct to Self: Selected Papers of W. R. D. Fairbairn. Volume I: Clinical and Theoretical Papers (Northvale, NJ, and London: Jason Aronson), 111-28; originally published in 1955, with longer title.
11.
Ferenczi, S. (1926) Further Contributions to the Theory and Technique of Psycho-Analysis, translated by J. I. Suttie and others ( London: Hogarth); from papers originally published in German or Hungarian between 1908 and 1926.
12.
Hegel, G.W.F. (1910) Phenomenology of Mind, translated by J. B. Baillie (London: Swan Sonnenschein); originally published in German in 1807.
13.
Heidegger, M. (1962) Being and Time, translated by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson (Oxford: Blackwell); originally published in German in 1927.
14.
Kant, I. (1929) Critique of Pure Reason, translated by N. Kemp Smith (London: MacMillan); originally published in German in 1781 and (2nd ed.) 1787.
15.
Laing, R.D. (1966) Religious experience and the role of organised religion; draft of a lecture given at N.A.M.H., 7 Jan. Typescript; University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections, Papers of Ronald David Laing, MS Laing A393.
16.
Laing, R.D. (1984) Psychotherapy as celebration. Wellspring, (Issue 1), 6-10; transcript of a talk delivered in Oct. 1983 at the Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, under the sponsorship of Wellspring. Printed text, with pencil emendations by R. D. Laing; University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections, Papers of Ronald David Laing, MS Laing A1.
17.
Laing, R.D. (1998) Wisdom, Madness, and Folly: The Making of a Psychiatrist 1927-57 (Edinburgh: Canongate); originally published in 1985.
18.
Macmurray, J. (1956) What is religion about? III: The celebration of communion. The Listener, (20 Dec.), 1027-8.
19.
Macmurray, J. (1957) The Self as Agent (London: Faber & Faber); copy held by University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections, Laing Sp Coll 561.
20.
Macmurray, J. (1961) Persons in Relation (London : Faber & Faber); copy held by University of Glasgow Library, Special Collections, Laing Sp Coll 331.
21.
Macmurray, J. (1964) `To Save from Fear'; four Lent talks, BBC transcripts of broadcasts, 12-20 Feb. 1964. (1. Fear and faith; 2. Faith and love; [3 missing]; 4. The world today); typescript, 17 pp. University of Edinburgh Library, Special Collections, John Macmurray Papers, Macmurray Gen. 2162/2.38.
22.
Miller, G. (2001) Cognition and community: the Scottish philosophical context of the `divided self'. Janus Head: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature, Continental Philosophy, Phenomenological Psychology and the Arts, 4 (1), 104-29.
23.
Miller, G. (2004) R. D. Laing (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).
24.
Miller, G. (2008) Scottish psychoanalysis: a rational religion. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 44 (1), 39-59.
25.
Parsons, M. (2006) Ways of transformation. In D. M. Black (ed.), Psychoanalysis and Religion in the 21st Century: Competitors or Collaborators? (London: Routledge), 117-31.
26.
Rillie, J. (1988) The Abenheimer/Schorstein Group. Edinburgh Review, (78-79), 104-7.
